


deluge

by butterflyswimmer



Category: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni | Higurashi When They Cry
Genre: Autumn, Comfort, Crushes, F/M, Fluff, Short, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:28:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29987715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflyswimmer/pseuds/butterflyswimmer
Summary: “How did you know I didn’t have an umbrella?”“Because you’re Mion.”
Relationships: Maebara Keiichi/Sonozaki Mion
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

If you thought about it, it was actually strange she didn’t get hurt more often during club activities. There she was spinning in circles, prancing around the room, jumping on furniture. But she came from Hinamizawa, after all. Even if she did stumble and end up with scrapes and bruises, it was nothing to fuss over. She had dealt with more than just scratches during the Dam War. And she had always gotten right back up and kept on going.

She’d told him that so many times—as many as he’d rolled his eyes and lectured her on infections and injuries. Of course, he’d always give up with a sigh as soon as he remembered who he was talking to.

So it’s some fraction of unexpected, at least, that she finds him leading her to the nurse’s office now.

They had collided whilst both rounding the same corner of the school building from opposite directions during a game of zombie tag. Perhaps it was because they had knocked skulls quite nastily—she hadn’t realised what was going on until he was marching her back into the building. Blood and grit speckled her shins, and they stung in a way that reminded her of childhood.

Their footsteps echo throughout the corridor. The voices of their classmates float past in snatches, still playing, oblivious. They come in through the open windows along with the summer warmth, like ghosts made of sunlight. As they walk, time and again, sharp, teasing remarks make their way to her lips, then die repeatedly under the sensation of his grip on her wrist.

He rattles through the room’s collection of cabinets as she sits on the bed, musing over the tranquility. The isolated noises ricochet off the walls, the building made somehow different by the lack of life. It isn’t like her to exist in quiet.

Maybe that’s why she feels strange, as she watches him wet a wad of tissues at the sink before coming to join her. He kneels, warns her just before he does it, and she doesn’t know if it’s the sudden coldness or the slight pain as he cleans the dirt from the graze that makes her chest constrict. When he glances up at her, the concentration and worry have hardened his expression, and she remembers the day he’d transferred into the school and she’d been the only one brave enough to talk to him. How long ago had that been? He asks if she’s still dizzy. She says she thinks so, just a bit, as he dresses the cut, fingertips barely there against her skin.

As she stands, she seems to come back to herself, and their eyes meet. He smiles at her—a smile that’s just a little unsure of itself, gaze still attentive. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? Okay now?”

She looks down at her leg, carefully cleaned and patched up, and wonders what it is she wants to say. She doesn’t know, not yet at least. And so she takes a deep breath, and smiles back, and says what she can.

“Yeah. I’m okay now.”


	2. Chapter 2

Autumn has arrived in Hinamizawa. By the time school is over, the heavy colours of the sky are blurring into one another. The showers come in intervals that stitch together the days and shut out the heat of summer.

It’s on one such afternoon that Rena explains apologetically she has an errand to run in Okinomiya. And so they all begin to pack up—it was an unspoken rule that they wouldn’t hold club activities if anyone was missing.

It had become commonplace for rain to begin its pitter-patter against the windows as they made their way through the game of the day. She never noticed it at first, but every so often a hush would fall as they each reviewed their hand or considered their next move, and the classroom would be filled with the sound.

By the time they finished up, though, the rain always seemed to have chased itself back into the bowels of the sky, and they were left instead with the beginnings of watercolour sunsets, pinks and oranges reflected in the puddles scattered along the path home.

It makes sense, then, that just as she and Keiichi reach the school entrance, the sky folds. And at first she keeps walking, even as he stops at the genkan to fish around in his satchel—but by the time he’s pulled out an umbrella, it’s become a downpour. Squealing schoolchildren scatter, leaving them alone together. She stands in the yard facing him, and he looks at her.

When she doesn’t move, he only sighs and comes to join her, pulling her towards him with a hand at her shoulder. He keeps it there as they begin to walk, as though she’ll be left behind if he doesn’t.

“How did you know I didn’t have an umbrella?”

“Because you’re Mion.”

It’s quiet after that—just the raindrops bouncing off of the canopy as they make their way down the road. Beyond the umbrella, Hinamizawa disappears under the deluge. The sound is so all-encompassing that she can almost convince herself she’s somewhere far, far away—perhaps in a tropical rainforest in a country she can’t even imagine. And so she tries it for just a moment, pressing her eyes shut, and trips over her own feet. In an instant, his hand returns to her shoulder, bringing her back to reality, catching her just before she falls.

“Are you okay?” There’s no retort, no annoyance, and so she doesn’t know what to do.

She can’t bring herself to look, and it feels like there’s something heavy pressing down on her chest, so she settles on a nod, and watches her feet. This time, he doesn’t let go.

She doesn’t need an umbrella. It’s just rain. In fact, she’s not sure she’s ever used one, when she thinks about it. She’s not sure she’s ever done this.

Sometimes their shoulders brush as they walk, and after that she tries to be more rigid, tries to somehow maintain distance within this space, two people where there should be one. If Keiichi notices, it doesn’t show.

She can smell the rain, and she can also smell him. Have they ever been this close, for this long? She keeps trying to remind herself to talk, and it’s not like her to have to do that, but every time she parts her lips, the sound of the storm swallows the silence, and it feels okay. She realises it’s okay, to just be like this.

She only becomes suddenly aware of their surroundings when, instead of parting ways with her where they usually do, he turns onto the road leading to her house. Finally, she looks at him.

“Kei-chan?”

“Mm?”

“What are you doing?”

He frowns at her. “Walking you to your door.”

And that’s exactly what he does, and once they’re there, they stand in the rain-silence. It thunders down onto the roof of the veranda, and at last he lowers the umbrella. When she once again fails to speak, he smiles that smile he always does at her—the one that’s sort of laughing, but also soft, and warm. The one that seems to tell her he knows more about her than she does about herself. “You can try, ‘thank you’”.

She manages a noise of acknowledgement, but he’s already turning away, lifting the umbrella again. “See you tomorrow,” he says over his shoulder. The same that, she sees now, is soaked through—shirt clinging to his skin. He shakes the rain out of his hair—the one side that’s wet, the one that had been furthest from her—and walks away, and after some time, she goes inside.

While she’s taking off her shoes, the housekeeper rushes up with a towel, but she doesn’t need it. He’d made sure every inch of her was dry, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i haven’t posted in so long!! ahh!! i actually wrote this years ago and found it again the other day while i was going through my google docs graveyard of unfinished higurashi fics. i thought it was cute so i decided to clean it up and post it. this was originally a four-part fic looking at keiichi and mion’s relationship through the four seasons that i never finished (i think the winter part ended up in another story i have on here actually, where mion brings keiichi a gift on christmas eve). i was going to just post the autumn part but i thought they still complimented each other. i’m working on a few more substantial higu pieces so hopefully i’ll be able to post something else soon T_T for now enjoy this bitesize keimii
> 
> p.s. naming fics is the bane of my existence  
> p.p.s. i’m mad because failing to post anything in 2020 means i broke what would now be a five-year streak of posting higu fics but anyway yeah i’m still here. i can’t escape


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